Revealed: The Insidious Creep of Pseudo-Public Space
A series of investigations into how our public spaces are increasingly privately-owned and policed by corporations
-Published in the Guardian
-London / 2017
In summer and autumn 2017, Jack Shenker produced several exclusive stories for the Guardian uncovering the growing phenomenon of public spaces falling under private control – and the secret restrictions imposed by corporations on citizens that walk into them - which prompted a national political response. These were accompanied by original maps and data visualisations created in partnership with a wider reporting team, and available on the Guardian website. Scroll down to read the articles in order of publication…
1. Revealed: the insidious creep of pseudo-public space in London
Pseudo-public space – squares and parks that seem public but are actually owned by corporations – has quietly spread across cities worldwide. As the Guardian maps its full extent in London for the first time, Jack Shenker reports on a new culture of secrecy and control, where private security guards can remove you for protesting, taking photos... or just looking scruffy
A Guardian Cities investigation has for the first time mapped the startling spread of pseudo-public spaces across the UK capital, revealing an almost complete lack of transparency over who owns the sites and how they are policed.
Pseudo-public spaces – large squares, parks and thoroughfares that appear to be public but are actually owned and controlled by developers and their private backers – are on the rise in London and many other British cities, as local authorities argue they cannot afford to create or maintain such spaces themselves.
Although they are seemingly accessible to members of the public and have the look and feel of public land, these sites – also known as privately owned public spaces or “Pops” – are not subject to ordinary local authority bylaws but rather governed by restrictions drawn up the landowner and usually enforced by private security companies.
The Guardian contacted the landowners of more than 50 major pseudo-public spaces in London, ranging from financial giant JP Morgan (owner of Bishops Square in Spitalfields) to the Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Estate (owner of Paternoster Square in the City of London) and the Abu Dhabi National Exhibitions Company (owner of the open space around the ExCeL centre).
“To the ordinary person, there’s no distinction. To me, it's everything - I’m not the sort of person they want”
We asked them what regulations people passing through their land were subject to, and where members of the public could view those regulations. All but two of the landowners declined to answer. We also asked all local authorities in London for details of privately owned public spaces in their borough, via the Freedom of Information Act; most councils rejected the request.
In response to the Guardian investigation, the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has now vowed to publish new guidelines on how these spaces – some of the city’s most prominent squares and plazas – are governed.
In partnership with Greenspace Information for Greater London CIC (GiGL), the capital’s environmental records centre, Guardian Cities has produced the first ever comprehensive map of pseudo-public spaces in the capital. The underlying dataset is publicly available. Readers are invited to help contribute information on both new and existing sites to help track and monitor land ownership in London.
The King’s Cross development will host Google’s new London HQ. The Guardian offices are nearby
Under existing laws, public access to pseudo-public spaces remains at the discretion of landowners who are allowed to draw up their own rules for “acceptable behaviour” on their sites and alter them at will. They are not obliged to make these rules public.
The result is that unless landowners choose to volunteer the information themselves, members of the public have no way of knowing what regulations they are bound by at some of London’s biggest open spaces and whether activities they enjoy a legal right to in other public areas – be they taking photos, holding a political protest or even simply sitting down and having a nap – are permitted, or whether they will result in removal by security guards.
Before (as a warehouse c1850) … and after (as the privately owned public space, Granary Square)
On the King’s Cross Estate – one of the largest redevelopment projects in London and including more than four acres of open and publicly accessible space – the Guardian was told by security officials that a list of private regulations governing users of the site did exist, but that the landowner did not wish to reveal them.
Outside City Hall on the south bank of the Thames, home to London’s democratically elected mayor and assembly, private security guards working for the More London estate (ultimately owned by the sovereign wealth fund of Kuwait) prevented the Guardian from carrying out any interviews.
Security officers intervened within moments of a reporter attempting to ask questions of members of the public, and immediately escorted him to the security office where it was explained that unsanctioned journalistic activity is banned on the site. When asked for an explanation of this rule and details of any other regulations that might restrict the rights of citizens passing through the area, the landowner refused to comment.
“Private landowners have the power to coerce us in what appear to be public streets and squares”
“This culture of secrecy on the part of landowners is scary,” Sian Berry, leader of the Green party in the London Assembly, told the Guardian. “Being able to know what rules you are being governed by, and how to challenge those rules, is a fundamental part of living in a democracy.”
Her words were echoed by Daniel Moylan, a Conservative councillor in London who served as a senior adviser to Boris Johnson during his time as mayor. “It’s extremely worrying,” said Moylan, who has warned of a “democratic deficit” in the governance of pseudo-public space. “Private landowners have the power to coerce us in what appear to be public streets and squares. If they have power over us then we must at least know what those powers are, where they get them from, and how they are held accountable.”
In response to the Guardian’s investigation, Jules Pipe, London’s deputy mayor for planning, regeneration and skills, said that a commitment to “genuinely open” public spaces will be a key part of Sadiq Khan’s forthcoming London Plan, which provides a framework for all planning decisions in the capital. The new London Plan will contain guidelines covering open spaces, he explained, and will seek to “maximise access and minimise restrictions, as well as enabling planners to establish potential restrictions at the application stage for new developments”.
“While the mayor agrees that private developments have a right to manage their property,” added Pipe, “it is important those areas that look to all intents and purposes like the public realm are not policed in an overly aggressive or intimidating manner.”
The Goods Yard in Shoreditch: a render of how its ‘public’ space will look
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But critics of pseudo-public space believe this doesn’t go far enough. “We could very easily legislate to say that all open spaces in the city are governed simply by the law of the land – both national law and the normal local authority bylaws, which are transparent and drawn up through democratic processes – and not by special, secret restrictions established by companies that vary from place to place,” argued Anna Minton, a writer and academic who specialises in the privatisation of public space. “It’s part of a crisis of accountability in our political culture at the moment. The Guardian asked a simple set of questions to landowners, and was met with a wall of silence. The message is clear: however public they may appear, these are private places, and that is private information.”
The Guardian Cities investigation into the lack of transparency over how Pops are governed comes as it publishes London’s first comprehensive map of such sites. In several other major cities, including New York, Toronto and Rotterdam, the city authorities or other organisations already maintain publicly accessible maps to help citizens identify pseudo-public spaces and the boundaries that divide them from genuinely public land.
Despite calls from campaigners, until now no such map has ever been drawn up for London, in part because details of land ownership are scattered between several different bodies, and information regarding public access provisions in planning agreements can be difficult to obtain from local authorities.
The More London development on the south bank of the Thames includes the land around City Hall. Permission is needed to hold protests or interview politicians on camera
In collaboration with GiGL, Guardian Cities has identified approximately 50 sites in London that meet our relatively narrow criteria for pseudo-public space: namely outdoor, open and publicly accessible locations that are owned and maintained by private developers or other private companies. They include major areas of open land around Paddington Station (encompassing both Merchant Square and Paddington Central), nearly seven acres of open space owned by Arsenal Football Club in Islington, busy shopping and dining plazas in Covent Garden and Victoria, and the pseudo-public area around one of London’s most iconic attractions, the London Eye. The dataset behind the map has been made public, and can be accessed on the GiGL website and the London Datastore.
“Being able to know what rules you are being governed by, and how to challenge them, is a fundamental part of democracy”
For the purposes of the map, other privately owned public spaces have been excluded, among them sites which are privately-owned by public bodies (such as the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London, which is managed as a private site by the London Legacy Development Corporation) and those owned or managed by charitable trusts (including Jubilee Gardens in Southwark and the large area of land under the control of the Canal & Rivers Trust), as well as locations where users would not reasonably expect to be on public land – such as churchyards, school fields and indoor shopping centres.
Julie Cox, partnership manager at GiGL, told the Guardian that although this was only the first iteration of a comprehensive map of London pseudo-public space, and would therefore inevitably contain some omissions and inconsistencies, the organisation plans to update and expand this dataset in the future and is keen to hear from members of the public on what land should and shouldn’t be included. “We’re in contact with many of our partners about these data, and there’s a lot of interest,” she said. “It’s something we’d definitely like to keep updating as part of the suite of datasets we are responsible for, and ideally something members of the public can contribute to as well.”
The Crescent in Portland Place, Marylebone, in 1822. In the 19th century many areas of London were sealed off from the public.
Private control over large open spaces in the city is not without historical precedent. In the 19th century many areas of central London, including stretches of Belgravia, Marylebone and Pimlico, were effectively gated communities, sealed off from the general public and policed by private entities. Throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries public struggles were waged to force open land and ensure streets, squares and parks were adopted by local authorities over whom Londoners of all backgrounds – not just the influential or wealthy – could exert a measure of democratic control.
In the past few decades, however, the creation of corporate-owned urban areas like Canary Wharf and the Broadgate development around Liverpool Street Station began to reverse this trend, and by 2007 the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors was describing the growing private ownership and management of spaces that appeared to be in the public realm as a “quiet revolution in land ownership”.
Since then, the acute budgetary pressures placed on local authorities by successive governments have encouraged municipal planners to cede control of almost all new open spaces in the city to developers; some academics now refer to a new era of ‘urban enclosure’, echoing the fencing and enclosing of Britain’s rural commons that took place during the 17th and 18th centuries.
The Paddington development includes the headquarters of Marks & Spencer
“As the austerity cuts hit non-statutory services such as parks harder and harder, London boroughs have been left stuck between a rock and a hard place,” said Tony Leach, chief executive of the charity Parks for London. “They know that they need to provide and maintain new green spaces for residents, but they believe they cannot afford to do so themselves.”
The nature of pseudo-public space in London was highlighted in 2011, when protesters from the Occupy movement initially attempted to rally in the open space outside the London Stock Exchange in Paternoster Square, only to be removed by police on the grounds that they were trespassing on private land.
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Public space campaigners point out that Pops appear unrestricted to the average person as long as they are behaving in ways that corporate landowners approve of, such as passing through on the way to work or using the area for spending and consumption. It is only by exhibiting unsanctioned behaviour – holding a political demonstration, for example, or attempting to sleep rough in the area – that citizens are able to discover the limitations on these seemingly public sites.
Leach believes that increasing public awareness is vital, and that the publication of a map detailing the locations of pseudo-public space is an important first step. “I’m not against privately owned public spaces in essence,” he said. “The question is about the rights we enjoy there. I’m a strong believer that parks are our last remaining truly democratic public spaces, and that should continue. A lot of our great protest and reformist movements started in parks because they were natural gathering places. These spaces are a representation of our freedom in society, which is little by little being eroded. I think a lot of people just don’t realise it.”
Occupy protesters on a barricade outside St Paul’s Cathedral in 2012 after they lost their fight against eviction in the high court
On a recent visit to a number of different pseudo-public spaces in London, the Guardian found that this was true. After asking dozens of individuals across several sites about the ownership status of the area around them, only one – who happened to work for the landowner’s estate management office – said they were aware it was private land.
Huge variations exist in how clearly land ownership is signposted, as well as in the number of amenities provided by the landowners and the level of security in operation. Many of the newest sites feature similar types of landscaped gardens and water features, free wi-fi and big screens showing summer sport, as well as activities like table tennis, climbing walls and outdoor gyms. Alongside these conveniences, and just as omnipresent, are signs of private surveillance and what experts refer to as ‘defensive’ architecture – from CCTV cameras to benches specially designed to prevent homeless people from sleeping there.
“I’m allowed to lie down on the grass, but not to close my eyes,” one homeless man, who goes by the moniker Yankee Dan, said at the recently opened Pancras Square, part of the pseudo-public King’s Cross Estate. “I tried to take a nap the other morning, just for an hour or two, and every time my eyes began to shut I was woken up by security guards.”
Another homeless man at King’s Cross, who did not wish to be identified, said that it was those on the margins of the society that came up hardest against the hidden rules and borders of the site. “To the ordinary person, there’s no distinction between here, and there,” he said, pointing first at a public pavement by the taxi rank, and then at a privately owned road that leads north towards Granary Square. “To me, the difference is everything, because I’m not the sort of person they want over there.”
East Village, by the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, was converted from the Athletes’ Village of the 2012 Games
As things stand, corporate authority over who can and can’t access open spaces in the capital is only set to grow. Nearly all of the city’s ongoing major redevelopment projects, from the mammoth Nine Elms neighbourhood in Battersea to new construction in Elephant and Castle and at Shoreditch’s Bishopsgate Goods Yard, is set to include new pseudo-public space, but details of what rights Londoners will enjoy there – or the ways in which they can expect to be policed – remain a mystery.
The Guardian asked the development consortium behind Nine Elms, as well as Hammerson and the Ballymore Group, developers of the Bishopsgate Goods Yard, for information regarding future restrictions and permissions on their pseudo-public spaces, but none were willing to comment. Neither were the councils of Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Lambeth or Wandsworth – the relevant planning authorities for the two sites.
“Public space, whoever owns it, should be open and free to use, and these things need to be guaranteed at the time that we as a society give permission for developments to happen,” observed Matthew Carmona, a professor at the Bartlett School of Urban Planning. “But cities like London have always had diverse combinations of ownerships, predominantly public but also private and semi-private. There’s all sorts of complications and nuances which I think fail to be understood by claims that all privatisation is bad, and all public ownership of public space is good. I’m not interested in using the issue of privately-owned public spaces as a surrogate for a larger political argument. I think there are many instances where private spaces are well-used and enjoyed, and contribute socially and economically to the city.”
The Battersea Power Station development is set to boast the usual array of pseudo-public features
For Anna Minton, however, the aesthetic appeal or otherwise of pseudo-public spaces misses the point. “The architecture of any period, including the production of space, reflects the socioeconomic forces of that period and in that respect the growth in pseudo-public spaces is a reflection of the neoliberal city,” she argued. “This type of development is not inevitable: it’s a very Atlanticist model, seen primarily in North America and here, and not so much in Europe, and it involves local government and the private sector working together in such a way that it is really undermining our democratic rights over the city.”
Alternatives to pseudo-public space do exist. In one suburb of Paris, a citizen-run project has taken control of more than 5,000 sq m of land and is helping to fuel debate about the creation of the ‘urban commons’ – commonly owned and managed spaces that are not subject to the logic of the market. In Aberdeen, plans to hand over control of the city’s historic Union Terrace Gardens to a consortium of business interests were recently abandoned in favour of keeping the site in public hands.
Meanwhile, in London, private ownership of apparently public spaces continues to increase. Circus West Village on the Nine Elms complex, marketed as “the first chapter in Battersea Power Station’s unfolding story”, has just been opened, and boasts a familiar array of pseudo-public features by the Thames: outdoor chairs, art installations, sloping walkways and potted plants.
Watching over them, dressed in a hi-vis jacket, was a private security guard. The Guardian asked him what rules he was enforcing, and he shrugged. “Whatever the owners tell me to,” he said, jerking his thumb towards his walkie-talkie. “It’s their land, after all.”
The Guardian and GiGL map of privately owned public space. Contribute to updates and see the full key here
A note on the investigation
Guardian Cities contacted the landowners of more than 50 pseudo-public spaces in London, asking an identical set of questions: what restrictions are in place covering users of your land, how are these enforced, where can members of the public see a list of these restrictions, and what conditions are there in the relevant planning agreements regarding public access to your land? We also asked whether a series of public activities – including peaceful political protest, non-commercial photography, non-commercial artistic performances and rough sleeping – would be permitted on their site.
Of all the landowners contacted, only two – the Canary Wharf Group, which owns large stretches of land in the Docklands, and East Village, a new development on the site of the old Athlete’s Village near the Olympic Park – provided a full set of answers. The Canary Wharf Group said that it was “very anxious to ensure that there is public access to the common areas [of its land] at all times” and that it wanted visitors to “feel that the common areas can be used as public spaces.” East Village told the Guardian that the company is “committed to making East Village as welcome a neighbourhood as possible, and any policies we have are focused on maintaining the public realm for everyone’s safety and benefit.” Both landowners insisted that they would not restrict political protests on their sites, although it should be noted that the Canary Wharf Group has previously taken out a legal injunction to prevent anti-capitalist protesters from rallying there. Both landowners also said that homeless people attempting to make a bed would be asked to leave the site but would be directed towards relevant support services. East Village said that permission was needed for any photography or filming on its land; Canary Wharf Group said that non-commercial photography and filming was allowed. Both landowners said advance permission was needed for artistic performances and requests would be considered on a case by case basis. Neither landowner provided a definitive list of rules and restrictions in operation at their site that could be accessed by members of the public.
Of the other landowners contacted, the companies British Land (owner of Regents Place and Paddington Central) and CC Land (owner of the space around the Leadenhall Building) both provided short statements that did not directly address the questions asked. The remaining landowners contacted – including the Grosvenor Group (owner of Brown Hart Gardens in Westminster), Land Securities (owner of New Street Square and Cardinal Place), the Westfield Corporation (owner of open land around its shopping centres in Stratford and Shepherds Bush), and all the other landowners mentioned in the main body of the article – refused to comment.
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Additional credits - Editor: Chris Michael; Research: Naomi Larsson and Athlyn Cathcart-Keays for the Guardian, Julie Cox and Chloe Smith for GiGL; Production: Nick Van Mead; Graphics: Pablo Gutierrez
Read the full investigation on the Guardian website here, and explore the map of London’s pseudo-public spaces here.
The original story provoked a huge response from both members of the public and national political figures, including the UK’s opposition leader who made a statement condemning corporate restrictions on public space - covered in the following story (also online at the Guardian here)
2. Corbyn joins calls to reclaim UK pseudo-public space from corporate owners
Labour leader among those voicing concern after Guardian revealed secretive world of privately owned public spaces in London
Jeremy Corbyn has called for Britain’s pseudo-public spaces to be reclaimed from corporate interests, after a Guardian Cities investigation revealed the extent to which private ownership and secretive rule-making now dominate many of London’s most prominent squares and parks.
The Labour leader added his voice to a growing chorus of concern from across the political spectrum after the Guardian found that the vast majority of landowners of pseudo-public space in the capital – open areas which look and feel like public space but are actually privately owned and subject to private restrictions – refused to divulge information about what citizens were allowed to do on their sites.
“We must reclaim our public spaces from the corporate interests who want to control them,” Corbyn said. “Our country’s laws should govern public space, not secretive private rules. City life is made rich and exciting by our varied shared spaces. They should be run in the interests of the many not the few.”
The Labour leader was joined in his criticism by the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, who vowed to do everything in his power to address the issue, but blamed successive budget cuts by Conservative-led governments for the private sector’s growing role in managing public spaces.
A spokesman for Khan said the mayor understood “the strength of feeling about public spaces and is concerned that the government’s ongoing austerity measures will continue to push cash-strapped boroughs into working with private companies to deliver new, additional public space it cannot afford to create and take on itself.
“The mayor will go as far as the law allows in his new London Plan to ensure rules applying to such spaces are no more onerous than those that apply on publicly owned land,” he added.
Khan is under increasing pressure to act after the Guardian contacted the landowners of more than 50 pseudo-public spaces in London, ranging from some of the world’s biggest financial institutions to the sovereign wealth fund of Kuwait, which has ultimate ownership of the land surrounding City Hall.
Shakespeare’s Globe and Tate Modern on London’s Bankside, which is privately owned
Landowners were asked to provide a list of the restrictions and behaviour codes they operate on their sites, as well as details of the private security companies used for enforcement, and information about how ordinary citizens could hold them accountable. All but two of the companies declined to answer.
Caroline Lucas, the co-leader of the Green party, described the revelations as “deeply concerning” and demanded that private landowners of publicly accessibly open spaces publish their list of rules immediately.
“They are clearly unwilling to act in a transparent way about the restrictions they have in place for use of their land,” she said. “The public sphere has been degraded in many ways in recent years – from the selling off of public services, to the streets on which we walk going into private ownership. The government should look to legislate as soon as possible to ensure that open spaces in our cities are governed by the law of the land, not secret regulations drawn up in boardrooms.”
The leader of the Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable, said “councils should protect all public spaces and in particular ensure that rights of way remain open. They also need to make it a clear condition of granting planning permission that the public are given every reasonable access.”
The leaders of both the Labour and Liberal Democrat groupings in the London assembly also condemned what some critics have labelled as a “crisis” of democratic governance in the city.
“This investigation claws back the veil of secrecy that has shrouded London’s pseudo-public space – perhaps most shocking of all is that many of us will be using these spaces with complete ignorance of the laws that govern them,” said Len Duvall, Labour’s leader at City Hall.
“It’s welcoming to read that the mayor will be publishing guidelines on how they’re governed, but landowners should also be taking it upon themselves to increase transparency by making public their notion of ‘acceptable behaviour’.”
As part of the Guardian Cities investigation, every local authority in London was asked for information relating to pseudo-public spaces in their borough, but most rejected the request. Some local councillors are now taking actions into their own hands and attempting to force landowners into being more accountable.
Anood Al-Samerai, leader of the Liberal Democrats in Southwark, told the Guardian she had written to More London, the private estate beside the Thames that includes City Hall – and where the Guardian was stopped from carrying out interviews by private security guards because of “unsanctioned journalistic activity” – demanding clarification on their policing of the site.
“It is deeply concerning that a space, right on the London mayor’s doorstep, has been shrouded in a controversy which wouldn’t look out of place in North Korea,” she said. “No one should feel intimidated or unwelcome in the area surrounding City Hall.”
Mark Thomas, the comedian and campaigner who has previously organised mass trespasses to challenge private restrictions in pseudo-public spaces, said it was up to citizens themselves to push back against corporate control.
“In terms of political institutions, there is not enough political will to change things,” he said. “It will be grassroots activities that make a difference: we need an urban ramblers movement that demands proper mapping, proper transparency, proper accountability and most importantly fights for the principle that basic, public rights cannot be trumped by private property rights in these open ‘public’ spaces.”
The Guardian contacted Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, to ask about accusations that the government’s austerity measures were fuelling the growth of pseudo-public space, and to seek his response to calls for legislation in this area. His department declined to comment.
Lack of transparency and accountability over pseudo-public space is a problem that has spread well beyond London. In another follow-up, several of Britain’s biggest cities were asked to share basic data about privately-owned ‘public’ spaces, but the vast majority refused to provide it.
3. 'It's really shocking': UK cities refusing to reveal extent of pseudo-public space
City administrations in Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow and seven others decline to outline the spread of privately owned public areas, or their secret prohibitions – which may include protesting or taking photos
Many of Britain’s largest cities are refusing to reveal information regarding the private ownership of seemingly public spaces, the Guardian has discovered, fuelling concerns about a growing democratic deficit within local city government.
A Guardian Cities investigation earlier this summer revealed for the first time the spread of pseudo-public space in London – large squares, parks and thoroughfares that appear to be public but are actually owned and controlled by developers and their private backers – and an almost complete lack of transparency over secret restrictions imposed by corporations that limit the rights of citizens passing through their sites.
The Guardian has since requested data on pseudo-public spaces, which are sometimes known as privately owned public spaces (Pops), from the country’s biggest urban centres beyond the capital.
Manchester’s Spinningfields business quarter, where the parkland is privately owned
Councils were asked about the extent of existing pseudo-public spaces in their area and details of any upcoming development plans that will include such spaces in the future. They were also questioned on how local citizens could access information about pseudo-public spaces, and about the nature of any private restrictions imposed by corporate landowners which may prevent members of the public from holding protests, taking photos, or exercising many of the other rights they are entitled to on genuinely public land.
Out of 14 local authorities contacted, only two – Cardiff and Cambridge – provided some details of pseudo-public sites under their jurisdiction. Belfast and Edinburgh councils said they were unable to share that information. Other city administrations, including Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Nottingham, Leicester, Bristol, Sheffield and Newcastle, declined to comment.
“It’s really shocking,” said professor Richard Sennett, a prominent sociologist at the London School of Economics whose work explores the politics of urban development. “What are local councils so afraid of? Conditions could be placed on new developments that force the creation of real public space and full transparency about land ownership and public rights.
“But in Britain we’ve long had this attitude of appeasement towards developers. If planning authorities were strong, rather than constantly bending over backwards to show how development-friendly they are, they would find that the companies fall into line.”
“In Britain we’ve long had this attitude of appeasement towards developers”
The revelation comes as pressure mounts on the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to use his forthcoming London Plan – which provides an overarching development strategy for the city – to push back against the creeping privatisation of public space.
Following the Guardian’s initial investigation, national political leaders including Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, the Liberal Democrats’ Vince Cable and Caroline Lucas of the Green Party all spoke out on the subject.
Shortly thereafter, a motion was passed in the London Assembly urging Khan to take a firm stance on the issue.
“Being able to know what rules you are being governed by, and how to challenge them, is a fundamental part of democracy,” said Sian Berry, a London Assembly member for the Green Party who proposed the motion.
The Liverpool One shopping development, which involved the corporate enclosure of several previously public streets
“Increasingly, London’s public space is in private hands and there is very little transparency around which individuals and groups can have access,” added Labour’s Nicky Gavron. “These are Londoners’ outdoor living rooms and it is appalling that access can be restricted.”
Several assembly members pointed out that City Hall itself is located on open but private land controlled by the sovereign wealth fund of Kuwait, which refuses to allow journalists to operate in the area without corporate permission.
The Mayor of London has vowed to establish new guidelines covering privately-owned “public” sites, designed to “maximise access and minimise restrictions, as well as enabling planners to establish potential restrictions at the application stage for new developments.”
But Gavron insisted that this was not enough. “The next London Plan should go further and establish real public transparency and accountability for setting rules to govern these spaces through the lifetime of developments, not just at the application stage,” she argued.
“Being able to know what rules you are being governed by, and how to challenge them, is a fundamental part of democracy”
Although London is at the centre of Britain’s trend towards the creation of pseudo-public spaces, budgetary pressures on local authorities and growing partnerships with the private sector have resulted in a number of similar developments emerging in other cities, including Liverpool One – a huge retail and leisure complex on the city’s waterfront which involved the corporate enclosure of several previously public streets – and the Spinningfields and First Street districts of Manchester.
Manchester’s under-construction NOMA neighbourhood, which is currently the largest development project in the north-west of England, is set to include two pseudo-public spaces; when asked about what agreements Manchester’s planning authorities had reached with the landowner regarding protecting public rights on these sites, the city council refused to comment.
Directly elected mayors responsible for some of Britain’s biggest urban regions told the Guardian that transparency and accountability in the governance of supposedly public spaces was vital.
“I’m deeply committed to creating a civic realm that is open, accessible and democratic,” said Steve Rotheram, mayor of the Liverpool City Region. “This is an integral part of civilised urban life and any erosion of public space or the privatisation of the civic realm is something that I would seek to oppose in terms of my powers and influence as Metro Mayor.”
‘[Open spaces] should be subject to the same laws and rules as everywhere else in our country and not indistinct restrictions’ - Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester.
A spokesperson for Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, told the Guardian that all of the city’s open and public spaces “should be subject to the same laws and rules as everywhere else in our country and not indistinct restrictions. While landowners have rights over their property, the Mayor believes it is crucial all of our public spaces are welcoming and genuinely open.”
Huw Thomas, the Labour leader of Cardiff city council, echoed those sentiments. “With council budgets being slashed we have had to find new ways of delivering for Cardiff and its residents,” he said. “We believe in positive partnerships with the private sector, but this doesn’t have to mean citizens lose their rights.”
James Palmer – mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, and the only Conservative local leader to respond to the Guardian’s enquiries – said that it was “only fair that individual owners decide how to manage their property when it is privately owned,” but added that “it is vital that those areas which are enjoyed by the public, and appear to be within the public realm, are not policed in an inappropriate, or aggressive, fashion.”
All the leaders quoted claimed that pseudo-public space, and associated issues regarding public rights and democratic accountability, were not as pervasive in their areas compared to London. The directly elected mayors of Bristol, the West of England and the West Midlands declined to comment.
Ultimately, some experts conclude, any widespread challenge to the spread of pseudo-public spaces may come from citizens themselves rather than top-down institutional leaders.
“The planning process is supposed to be democratic,” Adam Fineberg, an expert adviser on public services, observed. “The people responsible for drawing up planning policies and sitting on planning committees are elected representatives. So if citizens are concerned about this issue in their local areas, they can campaign and put pressure on representatives through the ballot box and try to ensure that future planning applications by developers are required to meet clear and strong conditions regarding public access and open governance. There’s nothing stopping planning authorities making approval dependent on those conditions being met. It’s a question of local democracy.”
Following the Guardian Cities investigation, the Mayor of London announced plans to draw up a new charter regulating the management of privately owned public spaces - a development given a cautious welcome by campaigners.
4. London mayor to draw up charter regulating pseudo-public space
Sadiq Khan will set out responsibilities for owners of public spaces after Guardian investigation which uncovered growing corporate control of parks and squares
The mayor of London will draw up a new charter regulating the management of privately owned public spaces, following a Guardian Cities investigation which uncovered growing corporate control over parks and squares in the capital.
The announcement comes as Sadiq Khan prepares to publish the first draft of his London Plan – the document that sets out the mayor’s strategic vision for London, and shapes development and planning policies across all of the city’s local authorities.
The charter, the first of its kind in London, will set out both rights and responsibilities for users and owners of public spaces, regardless of whether they are council-run or in the hands of private developers. Earlier this year, the Guardian revealed an almost complete lack of transparency over the rules governing “pseudo-public spaces”: open land that is accessible to citizens but is actually classed as private property, enabling security guards to eject members of the public on a whim and bar them from taking photographs or holding protests.
Pseudo-public spaces can now be found at some of London’s most famous locations, from the vast new redevelopment surrounding King’s Cross station to the site of City Hall itself, home to the capital’s democratic institutions and yet ultimately owned by the sovereign wealth fund of Kuwait. The revelations sparked a political backlash, with party leaders Jeremy Corbyn, Vince Cable and Caroline Lucas all speaking out to demand better protection of the public realm. Other leading mayors, including Andy Burnham in Manchester and Steve Rotheram in Liverpool, also stepped in to promise renewed protection of public spaces in their cities.
“The new London Plan will propose that effective management and ongoing maintenance of [the] public realm should be a key consideration in the design of places and secured through the planning system where appropriate,” Khan told the Greater London Authority recently, after it passed a motion calling on the mayor to address concerns, and announced plans to hold an inquiry into the issue. “Whether publicly or privately owned, [the] public realm should be open, free to use and offer the highest level of public access.”
Siân Berry, the Green Party assembly member who first proposed the motion, offered a cautious welcome to Khan’s plans. “The corporate takeover of our public spaces and their culture of secrecy might finally be stopped short,” she said. “But what this new public London charter means remains unclear. The charter sounds like it will only be advisory, so the real test will be in new policies and planning that must keep our public spaces open and inclusive for all.”
Regent’s Place in London, owned by the commercial property company British Land
Berry pointed out that in Camden, where she is a local councillor, new draft planning guidance will commit the council to creating open spaces that are “welcoming for everyone” and ensure that any rules drawn up by the owners of pseudo-public spaces are transparent, accountable and justified by the same reasons as those covering local authority bylaws. It will also introduce “break clauses” in the council’s contract with property developers, allowing the council to take over pseudo-public spaces if there are concerns with their management – with the cost of maintenance still borne by the developer for 10 years.
“I think this is an example of good practice which the mayor of London should take notice of,” argued Berry. A spokesperson for Sadiq Khan told the Guardian: “The mayor believes London’s public spaces should be open and free to use.”
The genesis for this investigation lies in a related Guardian story produced in 2015, in which Jack Shenker and public space activists Anna Minton and Bradley Garrett attempted to walk a stretch of the Thames Path in east London, only to find it blocked in several places by private developments. The full story – which delves further into the politics of both public space and the regeneration of the Thames – is available here.
